It was Heather Fearn’s (@HeatherBellaF) post on grammar schools that made me pause. She has written an interesting piece here on reasons why one could be in favour of grammar schools. I thought I would be persuaded.

I was not.

So I started to wonder why.

I’m not against selection per se. Neither am I outraged by the idea of splitting children up at the age of 11. I tweeted a lot yesterday asking teachers questions like, ‘What if we had a fantasy test that didn’t test cultural literacy and background (as all tests inevitably do, so penalising the poorer child), would we teachers then be pro-grammar? My own answer was, I’m still not sure I would be. What if we really could guarantee that a certain percent (80%? 90%?) of all grammar school children came from families earning under X amount, would we teachers be happy with the policy then?